“What do you need me here for, then? I don’t know beans about the Church, and I think I’d rather keep it that way.”
“Wouldn’t we all? I think our easiest answer to this would be to hand it off to Keselo.”
“I’ll go along with you there,” Padan agreed. “That young fellow’s got more education than all of the rest of us put together.”
“Could I have your attention?” The grey-bearded Dahlaine asked. “Our friends from the Trogite Empire are probably much more familiar with the religion of their part of the world than any of the rest of us are, so I thought it might be useful if they could give us some idea of what it’s all about.” He looked inquiringly at Narasan.
“I’m not too well versed in the peculiarities of the Church, Lord Dahlaine,” Narasan replied modestly, “but our young friend Keselo attended the University of Kaldacin, so he’s probably the best qualified to answer any questions you might have. To be completely honest with you, I don’t have much use for the Church—or the arrogant people who run the stupid thing. Tell our friend here about the religion that contaminates our part of the world, Keselo.”
“If you wish, sir,” Keselo replied obediently. Then he paused, his expression growing quite troubled. “The Church of the Empire isn’t really all that attractive, Lord Dahlaine,” he began. “I’m fairly sure that at some time in the distant past it was more wholesome and pure than it is now, but over the years it’s grown more and more corrupt.”
“Just how did it originate?” Dahlaine asked.
“That’s not too clear, Lord Dahlaine,” Keselo replied. “At some time in the distant past, a holy man named Amar, who may—or may not—have actually existed, came to the city of Kaldacin, which at that time was only a crude village, and he spoke to the people there about truth, charity, and morality. Nobody really paid too much attention to him at first, but then some rumors—that have never been confirmed—began to appear.”
“Exactly what sort of rumors?” Dahlaine asked.
“People said that they’d seen him flying—like a bird.”
“That’s ridiculous, Keselo,” Gunda snorted.
“Not really, Gunda,” Red-Beard disagreed. “Our Zelana can fly like an eagle, if she really wants to.”
“Not exactly, Red-Beard,” Lady Zelana corrected. “I don’t really need wings. Please go on, Keselo.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m quite sure that most of those ancient stories were pure fabrications thought up by Amar’s early followers to entice the nonbelievers into joining the faith. As the years passed, those fabrications grew wilder and wilder. Some said that Amar could remain underwater for several days at a time. Others said that he could walk through a solid stone wall—without leaving a hole in that wall. Then there were stories about moving mountains, freezing entire oceans, and other absurdities. As the Church grew larger, the absurdities grew more and more fantastic, and the gullible new converts came to accept almost anything. I think the real purpose of all those fabrications was to convince everybody that anything that’s impossible was possible, if your name happened to be Amar. At that time, it was little more than a myth designed to bring in more and more converts every day.”
“Just exactly where is this mythic person supposed to be now?” Dahlaine asked.
“The current Church doctrine’s a bit vague, Lord Dahlaine,” Keselo replied. “The last I heard, the Church maintains that he left the world behind and now wanders out among the stars, preaching to them.”
“I tried that one time,” Veltan said, “but the stars didn’t pay the least bit of attention to me.”
Keselo blinked and then he stared at Veltan in awe.
“That was quite a long time ago, Keselo,” Lady Zelana explained. “Our baby brother offended Mother Sea, and she sent him off to the moon to learn better manners.”
“I was only teasing her, Zelana,” Veltan protested.
“We’re straying here,” Dahlaine said firmly. “From what you’ve told us so far, Keselo, I’d say that the early Church of Amar was fairly simple and basically designed to make people feel more comfortable. What went wrong?”
“I don’t think I could actually pinpoint the time—or the event that altered the Amarite church, Lord Dahlaine,” Keselo replied. “I’d say that it was most likely a gradual change. The early priests of the faith were primarily paupers whose lives depended on the charity of the faithful. As time went on, though, contributions became increasingly mandatory, and the clergy more greedy. The way things stand right now, the higher-ranking members of the clergy are the wealthiest men in the Empire, but they still want more.” He smiled faintly. “There’s a tired old joke in the Empire that says that Church doctrine requires everybody in the empire to contribute everything—and then some—every time the collection plate goes by.”
“Well, hallelujah, Jalkan!” Gunda said with a broad grin.
Padan laughed. “Nicely put there, old friend,” he said.
Keselo smiled. “Subcommander Gunda was just joking, I think, but what he just said comes very close to being an accurate description of the current clergy of the Amarite church. Jalkan is probably the greediest man in the whole world—right up until you take a look at the higher members of the clergy. They take greed out to the far edge. They believe that everything in the entire world belongs to them—even the people.”
“And that brings us face-to-face with slavery, Lord Dahlaine,” Narasan added grimly.
“I was just about to raise that question,” Dahlaine said in a bleak tone. “Was slavery a part of the original Amarite doctrine?” he asked Keselo.
“Most certainly not!” Keselo exclaimed. “The original Church denounced slavery as an abomination.”
“It would seem, then, that holy old Jalkan and his friends have strayed from the path just a bit,” Padan suggested.
“Maybe we should correct that,” Sorgan Hook-Beak declared. Then he grinned wickedly. “I’ve always enjoyed correcting people when they’re wrong.”
“It’s our duty, friend Sorgan,” Narasan said blandly.
“You’re going to be busy with the bug-people, Narasan. I’ll take on the chore of whomping the Church people.” He put on a woeful face. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s going to have to do it.”
“Do those idiots in the Trogite Church actually believe that they can own people?” Dahlaine demanded.
“I’m afraid so, Lord Dahlaine,” Keselo replied, “but the Church very seldom keeps the slaves. They sell them to the slave-dealers, who turn around and sell them to people who own vast amounts of territory but would sooner die than farm it themselves. Over the centuries an occasional emperor felt much as you do about slavery, and he issued an imperial proclamation abolishing the institution, but he almost never lived for very long after that proclamation, since if the Church didn’t kill him, the rich landowners did. There’s a lot of money to be made from slavery, and the people who deal in slaves and the people who buy them aren’t about to let anybody interfere.”
“I think we might have a bit of a problem here,” Dahlaine said then. “If the Church is corrupt, doesn’t that mean that the Church soldiers are as well? How can we trust people like that to do what we want them to do?”
“Who said anything about trusting them, big brother?” Zelana retorted. “Somebody, who I dearly love, has taken the matter completely out of our hands.”
“I think you’re just making this up,” Zelana’s sister declared, sounding more than a little offended. “Nobody could have done that.”
“You’re wrong, sister,” Lady Zelana disagreed. “Somebody did. I don’t know who—or how—but she’s obviously trying to help us, and we need that help.”
Aracia glared at Lady Zelana and then abruptly turned and stalked away.
“What’s your sister’s problem, Lady Zelana?” Sorgan Hook-Beak asked bluntly.
“She’s just been outdone,” Zelana replied with a faint smile, “and Aracia can’t believe that anybody’s capable of that. Sh
e’s also having trouble with Keselo’s description of the Amarite church. There’s a goodly number of fat, lazy people in her Domain who spend hours every day telling her that she’s beautiful and all-powerful. Aracia loves to be adored, but Keselo’s story just raised the possibility that her priests are glorifying her just to keep their positions in what they call ‘the Church of Holy Aracia,’ so that they can avoid honest work.”
“Isn’t that all sort of silly?” Sorgan asked.
“‘Silly’ comes fairly close, wouldn’t you say, Dahlaine?” Lady Zelana asked her older brother.
“Not right in front of Aracia, I wouldn’t,” Dahlaine replied with a faint smile. Then he straightened. “Let’s get back to business here,” he said firmly. “If those Church armies are, in fact, coming here to help us—even though they don’t know it—I think we’d better do all we can to help them.” He looked at Padan. “How are they progressing?” he asked.
“They’re doing a little better now that we’re providing them with building materials. They’ve still got some distance to go, though. I think our major problem’s going to be the width of that ramp they’re building. It’s only about ten feet wide, and that’s not wide enough to get a significant force up here in a short time.”
“And,” Torl added, “as soon as any of them get up here and see all that pretty sand, they’ll start running toward it just as fast as they can. If they dribble on down to the Wasteland in twos and threes, the bug-people will have them for lunch.”
“That’s where we come in, cousin Torl,” Sorgan said. “Our trenches and barricades will definitely slow them down until their friends can catch up with them.”
“Did you by any chance recognize the voice of this lady who spoke to you while you were dreaming, Longbow?” Dahlaine asked.
“I’m positive that I’ve heard the voice before, Dahlaine,” Longbow replied, “but I can’t quite put my finger on just who she is.”
“She was undoubtedly concealing her identity from you,” Dahlaine said thoughtfully, “and that sort of suggests that she’s somebody we all know. Did she just talk to you, or did she show you anything?”
“She was never visible in the dreams,” Longbow said. Then he frowned slightly. “Her language seemed to be quite archaic—almost as if she were speaking to me from the past.”
“That might have had something to do with her attempt to conceal her identity from you,” Dahlaine mused. “It’s not really important right now, though. She’s managed to manipulate the thinking of about a half-million Trogites, and even though they don’t know it, they’re coming north to help us. We’ll worry about who she is some other time. Right now we’d better do anything we can to help her. If this turns out the way I think it will, she’s probably already won this war for us.”
Early the following morning Padan was standing near the riverbank above the thundering waterfall watching as his men, grunting and sweating, were rolling boulders down toward the brink of the gorge from about a quarter of a mile up the slope. “It looks like we’re about to run out of boulders up here,” he muttered. Then he peered down at the river below the falls. “They must be sleeping on the job down there,” he added. “They’re definitely slowing down.” He looked around. “Sergeant Marpek!” he shouted, “Could you come here for a minute?”
Marpek was a solidly built fellow, which was only natural, perhaps, because he’d made a career out of solid building as one of the best engineers in Narasan’s army.
“Is there some kind of problem, sir?” he asked as he joined Padan at the edge of the gorge.
“Is it my imagination or have those idiots down there slowed down quite a bit?”
Marpek squinted down into the gorge. “They’re still doing the best they can, sir,” he replied. “They seem to be working as hard as they have for the last several days.”
“The ramp they’re building hasn’t come up more than a yard or so,” Padan protested.
“I’d be very surprised if it had, sir.”
“Could you explain that to me—in nice, simple, one-syllable words?” Padan asked. “Try to keep it in mind that I’m not too fluent in the language of engineers.”
Marpek smiled. “They need more rubble now, sir. The farther up the wall of that gorge they come, the more dirt, gravel, boulders and such they’re going to need. If it was flat, they’d move at the same speed, but it comes up at about a thirty- degree angle, so it takes a lot more rubble to come one foot ahead than it did a few days ago.” He held out his hand and squinted at the space between his thumb and forefinger. “I’d say that they’ve got about three hundred feet—or a hundred yards—to go.” He looked off into the distance, tapping one finger against his iron breastplate. Then he looked just a bit startled. “I hadn’t really given this much thought, sir, but now that I’ve put a few numbers together, I’d say that we’ve got quite a long time to wait before they finish.”
“Throw some kind of number at me, sergeant,” Padan said.
“At thirty degrees, ten feet wide, and two hundred feet high, I’d say that they’ll need about sixty thousand cubic yards of rubble, sir,” Marpek said.
“Sixty thousand?”
“If they’d made it steeper, they wouldn’t have needed so much,” Marpek mused, “but it’s too late to do anything about that now, I’m afraid.”
“That’s going to take them most of the rest of the summer, Markpek!” Padan exclaimed.
“That’s fairly close, I’d say.”
It was shortly after noon when Sorgan, Torl, and Rabbit joined Padan at the rim of the gorge. “What’s got you so worked up, Padan?” Sorgan asked.
“Numbers, my friend,” Padan replied. “I just received a fairly abrupt lesson in multiplication. Does the term ‘cubic yard’ mean anything to you?”
Sorgan shrugged. “Three feet by three feet by three feet, isn’t it?”
“Unfortunately, there’s still another number involved,” Padan added sourly. “How does sixty thousand sound to you?”
“Just exactly what are we talking about here, Padan?” Torl asked.
“The amount of rocks and whatnot those people down there will need to finish that ramp.”
“Where did you come up with a number like that, Padan?” Sorgan demanded.
“Sergeant Marpek dropped it on me,” Padan replied glumly, “and he’s probably the best engineer in Narasan’s army.”
“I think you’d better look somebody else up, Padan. That’s not possible.”
“I’m afraid that it’s very possible, cousin,” Torl disagreed. “The higher up they build that ramp, the more rubble they’ll have to pile up under it.”
“What if we gave them logs to play with instead of rocks?” Rabbit suggested.
“Rocks, logs, what’s the difference?” Torl scoffed.
“If they’ve got logs, they won’t have to pile garbage under them,” Rabbit replied. “If they happen to get our point, they won’t keep on saying ‘ramp.’ They’ll say ‘bridge’ instead, won’t they?”
2
The only problem I can see with the idea is that we don’t really have very many axes or saws, sir,” Sergeant Marpek said. “There are plenty of trees on the slope that comes down to the riverbank, and we’ve got plenty of men, but we just don’t have enough tools to get the job done.”
Padan looked at Rabbit. “Any ideas?” he asked.
“I don’t have my forge or anvil here,” Rabbit reminded him. “so I don’t think I’ll be of much use.” He hesitated. “Your men could chop trees down with their swords, you know.”
Padan feigned a look of unspeakable shock. “Blasphemy!” he gasped.
“I’ve got a fairly reliable whetstone, Padan,” Rabbit added, “so your men should be able to polish the nicks and dents out of their swords if it bothers you so much. Then too, if using their swords is going to offend them so much, they could always use their teeth, I suppose.”
“Their teeth?”
“Beavers chew trees down all the
time, Padan,” Rabbit said, grinning broadly. “And there’s a bright side to that as well.”
“Oh?”
“If they’ve been chewing on trees all day, their teeth will probably be so sore that they won’t want any dinner after the sun goes down. Look at all the money you’ll save if you don’t have to feed them.”
There were some violent protests when Padan ordered his men to start chopping down trees with their swords, but that came to an abrupt halt after Padan had given them an alternative. “Report back to Commander Narasan. I’m sure you’ll find chopping at turtle-shells with your swords much more entertaining and a lot less boring than hacking down trees with them.”
The Treasured One: Book Two of The Dreamers Page 38